Author: HackWatchit

Louis Donald Mendonsa, 62, was sentenced following a guilty plea for distributing child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) via Dark Web and other online networks after 6,5000 explicit images were found on his devices. A California resident, Louis Donald Mendonsa (62), has been sentenced to 24 years and four months in federal prison for his involvement in managing four illegal websites on the dark web that shared explicit images and videos of children. Mendonsa, a Sacramento native, played a key role in maintaining these platforms, which were active from December 2021 until his arrest in November 2022. He received his sentence…

In Game Theory, how can players ever come to an end if there still might be a better option to decide for? Maybe one player still wants to change their decision. But if they do, maybe the other player wants to change too. How can they ever hope to escape from this vicious circle? To solve this problem, the concept of a Nash equilibrium, which I will explain in this article, is fundamental to game theory. This article is the second part of a four-chapter series on game theory. If you haven’t checked out the first chapter yet, I’d encourage…

Within the compounds, which often have close links to Chinese organized crime groups and online gambling syndicates, victims are typically forced to work day and night to scam hundreds of people at a time. This includes carrying out long-running investment scams that have netted criminals up to $75 billion over the past few years. If the trafficking victims don’t comply, they are often beaten or tortured. Escape or paying a ransom is often the only way out.Stable internet connections are crucial for the operations to be successful—from the initial targeting of potential human trafficking victims with false job postings to…

A safer internet isn’t a nice thing to have. It’s a necessity because we rely on it so heavily. And there’s plenty we can do to make it happen.  A safer internet might seem like it’s a bit out of our hands as individuals. The truth is that each of us plays a major role in making it so. As members, contributors, and participants who hop on the internet daily, our actions can make the internet a safer place.  So, specifically, what can we do? Take a few moments to ponder the questions that follow. Using them can help frame your…

Playing games online provides entertainment but exposes you to specific dangers during gameplay. Hackers and scammers specifically target your personal data, payment specifics, and gaming account information. Cybercriminals steal money and account credentials through phishing attacks, malware, and unsecured systems. Gaming carelessly can lead to possible profile loss and the threat of identity theft. Protecting your digital identity is an absolute necessity. Luckily, it’s not complicated. The steps needed to maintain gaming safety online are straightforward. Play and Gambling on Trusted Sites The online gaming sector appears to be gravitating towards a growth trajectory. Consequently, the need to provide an…

CoreWeave isn’t hanging around. Hot on the heels of a mega funding round valuing the GPU cloud company at a reported $19 billion, the New Jersey startup has opened an office in London that will serve as its European headquarters. Additionally, Coreweave said that it will open two data centers in the U.K. this year as part of a £1 billion ($1.25 billion) investment, its first outside the U.S. Founded in 2017, CoreWeave is one of a number of AI-focused cloud computing companies to benefit from the recent surge in AI, including the generative AI hype prompted by OpenAI’s ChatGPT.…

China-linked threat actors stole 10% of Belgian State Security Service (VSSE)’s staff emails Pierluigi Paganini February 28, 2025 Belgian authorities are investigating Chinese hackers for breaching its State Security Service (VSSE), stealing 10% of emails from 2021 to May 2023. The Belgian federal prosecutor’s office is probing a possible security breach on its State Security Service (VSSE) by China-linked threat actors. Chinese hackers gained access to the VSSE’s email server between 2021 and May 2023, stealing 10% of staff incoming and outgoing emails. “For nearly two years, hackers working for Chinese espionage exploited a breach in an American cyber company…

Your smart home hums right along. It sets your alarm, opens your garage door, pops up recipes on your refrigerator screen, turns up your lighting, and even spins selections as your in-house DJ. That’s to name just a few of the things it can do. Yet with all these connected conveniences, can smart homes get hacked? The short answer is, unfortunately, yes. Yet you have plenty of ways you can prevent it from happening. Why do hackers target smart homes? Smart homes and the Internet of Things (IoT) devices that populate them often offer prime targets for hackers. The reason?…

Misconfigurations in Active Directory Certificate Services (ADCS) can introduce critical vulnerabilities into an Enterprise Active Directory environment, such as paths of escalation from low privileged accounts to domain administrator. In PART ONE of this short ADCS series, we introduced Active Directory Certificate Services at a high level and walked through one of the escalation techniques, ESC1.  In this post, we will walk through the escalation technique, ESC4, using Certipy. ESC4 This issue occurs when a certificate template can be modified by a non-administrator account. This misconfiguration can occur when unintended users are granted one of the following template security permissions:…